


Alistair the Accidental Heretic

by hes5thlazarus



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Chant of Light (Dragon Age), Chantry Issues, Elf/Human Relationship(s), Gen, Humor, Kinloch Hold (Dragon Age), Pre-Canon, Religious Conflict
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29245104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hes5thlazarus/pseuds/hes5thlazarus
Summary: Alistair gets bored during morning prayer and starts changing the words of the Chant as he sings. Mother Prudence and Knight-Commander Greagoir are less than pleased, and soon he finds himself tripping up over accidental heresy even within the kitchens of Kinloch Hold. It's not easy, being a half-elf templar with a conscience, because even having a sense of humor is heresy.
Kudos: 10





	Alistair the Accidental Heretic

**Author's Note:**

> a friend not in Dragon Age fandom sent me this prompt: "a priest gets ex-communicated from his order due to a series of increasingly unlikely events which make the priest appear to be doing something sacrilegious when in fact he was trying to overcorrect for the previous appearance of sacrilege." this was my response. :)

They’ve caught him snoring through Lauds three times this week, so Alistair really wants to stay awake through this time. He thinks active thoughts: fireballs to the face, Isolde screeching when he broke her favorite bottle of perfume, nug-racing with the kitchen staff. Still he finds himself drifting. Mother Prudence’s voice has this wonderful soporific quality. She gurgles the Chant like raindrops in a drainpipe.    
  
He drifts off, eyes alighting on the stained glass window above the altar. Andraste stands silent, wreathed in flames, while Shartan without the ears fires arrows as Hessarian pulls out his sword. It’s all very Chantry, all very templar-y, which of course is to be expected because he is in a chantry and surrounded by templars and these robes are really quite itchy, they really need to try something finer spun, because what if he breaks out into a rash? Alistair is amused. If he scratches himself enough he can raise enough bumps to make it look like he has a rash, that he’s allergic to the templar uniform, and then they’ll have to let him home. They’ll have to. He’d rather go back to waiting on Arl Eamon’s squires than sing the Chant.   
  
“Maker have mercy, it never ends,” Alistair mutters to himself. He leans back in the pew. Sure, the shuffling is annoying, but at least he’s making it obvious he’s not falling asleep. He yawns. The guy next to him shoots him a glare. Alistair rolls his eyes.   
  
Mother Prudence continues to sing, and boy is she getting old. She warbles and Alistair thinks this must be why the Maker turned away in the first place, because the singing’s so bad. If everyone singing at all ends of the earth in harmony would bring Him back, would He be mad if they’re off key? He snickers to himself. The guy next to him, some landholder’s brat from Honnleath, shoots him a furious stare.   
  
“What?” Alistair says.   
  
“You’re being disrespectful,” he says.   
  
“Oh come on,” Alistair says. The liturgy stops and the hall falls silent, but Alistair can’t help himself, he keeps going on. “At least I’m awake. Listen, singing that bad is the reason the Maker turned away in the first place.”   
  
Mother Prudence gasps. Alistair looks around at the shocked templar faces around him and mutters, “Damn. Tough crowd.”   
  
They wash his mouth out first for the swear and second for the heresy. Unfortunately he was not heretical enough to be thrown out of the templars--but they do flog him, and like a child. Alistair is left sniffling and resentful, avoiding the others’ jeers as he walks gingerly into the mess hall. He eyes the hard bench warily, and rubs his backside. He kneels at his seat instead of sitting.   
  
“What are you doing?” the Honnleath recruit asks.   
  
“Praying,” Alistair snaps back. He groans as Mother Prudence enters the hall for the evening prayer before dinner. Achingly he maneuvers back onto his feet.   
  
Mother Prudence warbles, “Blessed are THEEEEY who STAAAAAAND beFOOOORE the corrUUUPT,” she sings it like she’s hiding a burp, “and the WIIIIIICked and do not FAAAALter.”   
  
Alistair looks around questioningly. “She’s off-rhythm today,” he remarks. “This is worse than usual.”   
  
The templars, recruits and all, bellow back, “BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS, THE CHAMPIONS OF THE JUUUUUST!”   
  
Alistair winces and rubs his ears, massaging the tapered points. He knows his mother must have been an elf, because he’s got the eyes and the hearing. For a second he envies the servants, who get to avoid evening prayer as they clean up the kitchen. He knows he should be grateful that Arl Eamonn elevated him to his human father’s status, but he’d rather be a cheesemonger than this.   
  
A Chantry sister rings a bell. Mother Prudence grandly announces to the hall, “ Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him.”   
  
The templars reply, “Foul and corrupt are they who have taken His gift and turned it against His children.”   
  
Alistair mutters instead, “Fowl and carrots are they who have taken His grits and turned it against his chitterlings.”   
  
The Honnleath guy elbows him.   
  
“What?” Alistair says, annoyed. “I’m hungry. Doesn’t ‘maleficar’ sound like a type of fancy Orlesian cheese?” He gapes at him, and Alistair shrugs. “Am I really the only one in this order who has a sense of humor? Is this what lyrium does to you?” A heavy hand comes down hard on his shoulder. Alistair giggles nervously to himself, and slowly cranes his neck up. “Ah, Knight-Commander Greagoir. Fancy seeing you here. Anything I can do to help?”   
  
“Alistair,” the Knight-Commander says wearily. “You know the drill. Out. No supper.”   
  
“Not even fancy cheese? We’ve been singing about it all day--”   
  
Greagoir gives him a gentle shove, and Alistair stops talking before he can dig himself deeper and make a joke about being a maleficarum, which would probably lose him the benefit of the doubt and get him killed. He hates the templars, but he likes living more. 

  
He paces around the dormitory to stave off hunger, because now he’s gotten himself anxious. He’s never met a blood mage and doubts he will, some of the older recruits will talk knowingly about Harrowings gone wrong, but from what he can tell, most of them go exactly right, it’s all about having the right mentality, and isn’t that the whole point of the Fade? It reflects what it’s given. So if he goes into the Fade with a mage and starts singing about chitterlings, there won’t be demons, just a feast. Alistair giggles in the silent room. Then his stomach growls, first going low, then rising an octave, warbling for a bit, and then settling to a moan. He clutches his gut. He’s a growing boy: he needs food, or else his thoughts will wander, and he’ll end up accidentally coming up with heresy again. He is particularly proud of that thought. Feed him or else he’ll become a heretic.   
  
Alistair grins and says, “Well, that’s sorted. Guess I’ll go to the kitchens then.” No one answers back, because he is in an empty room, but the Knight-Commander never actually told him to stay put, so he roves out in search of food, and maybe even companionship.   
  
The servants don’t like the templars or the mages much, though some of the other mixed-blood children give him the occasional curious look. Everyone is always trying to figure out whose son he is. Alistair would like to know, too. Arl Eamon told him his father is of noble blood, though not of Eamon’s own line--a nice way of telling him he isn’t his bastard, and Alistair can tell from his own face that his mother must have been an elf. He only hopes she hadn’t been coerced in some way, that she had been happy to have a baby, that it wasn’t ruination and damnation and shame, because the elves don’t like it when their people step out with humans either, but those thoughts are hungry thoughts, laced with despair, and when Alistair reaches the kitchen door frame, he silences them.   
  
The kitchen is empty but for the head cook, sitting at the head of a long flour-dusted table. He is studying a menu, squinting angrily. Alistair almost hesitates. He doesn’t want to interrupt. But the head cook catches his eye, and waves him in. The head cook has ears like him and the same eyebrows and chin. Maybe he’s a cousin. Everyone is related somehow, he hopes. He’d like to have relatives, and anyway, he’s nice to him sometimes, and has let him sneak leftovers before, so Alistair has high hopes for at least a snack tonight.   
  
“Hello!” Alistair sings out. “Was wondering if there’s any leftover cheese I can nibble on.”   
  
The cook stares at him. He says, “What are you, a mouse?”   
  
Alistair says hopefully, “Squeak, squeak.” He fixes his best innocent look onto his face. “They sent me to bed without supper again. But the Knight-Commander said nothing about a snack!”   
  
The cook scoffs. “What’d you do? Isn’t this the third time this week?”   
  
Alistair grins sheepishly. “I might’ve said ‘maleficarum’ sounds like a type of Orlesian cheese.”   
  
“Sweet Shartan,” the cook says, then corrects himself. “Maker’s breath.” He looks at Alistair significantly, and Alistair knows he is supposed to pretend he didn’t hear the elvhen prophet’s name. “Whoever’s bastard you must be, he’s a powerful man. Did they whip you?”   
  
“Eh,” Alistair rubs the back of his head. “Earlier, for something else.”   
  
The cook boggles. “What’d you do? Sing the Canticle of Shartan? How they haven’t burned you, I don’t know.”   
  
“Aw, they wouldn’t do that. They don’t burn people anymore,” Alistair says. The cook shakes his head. Alistair blinks. “They don’t, do they? They don’t even burn blood mages! It’s just a Smite or the noose nowadays. The Chantry wouldn’t do that!”   
  
The elf says, “They did that in the Dales. They did that to Andraste. What makes you special?”   
  
“Woah,” Alistair says. “You’re the one who brought up Shartan. I don’t even know the canticle.” He hesitates. “Well, the whole canticle.” He has heard some of the mages whispering it to each other, in corners of the library, where they don’t realize it’s enchanted to echo. “Do you?”   
  
The cook says sharply, “I don’t talk religion with templars. You might have the ears of the People, boy, but you don’t have the soul.” He folds the piece of paper and slips it into his apron, and Alistair understands suddenly that perhaps the week’s menu is not written on that piece of paper, but something infinitely more interesting. He thinks to himself,  _ blessed are the chitterlings, the champagne of the just _ .   
  
“Hey,” Alistair says. “Hey! I didn’t ask for this. I won’t--I’m not a templar! I don’t want to be. What’s your problem? I’m just here for the cheese.”   
  
The cook sighs. “You need to get out of here,” he informs him. “Not just my kitchen. The Circle. Because with your sense of humor, and your ears, not even noble blood will protect you. And you’ll drag anyone seen talking to you down with you.”   
  
Alistair snaps back, “ ‘A dog might slink back to the hand it has bitten and be forgiven, but a slave never. If you would live, and live without fear, you must fight.’” He rears back, grinning proudly. He has always had an excellent memory for recitation. “Don’t I know it.”   
  
“Get out,” the cook says flatly. “Out. Don’t even look at me, kid. Get the fuck out, heretic. And for the sake of your mother, I’ll give you a piece of cheese.”   
  
Alistair leaves abruptly, gnawing on a piece of cheese, and takes a lesson from it. He keeps his mouth shut during lessons and prayers. The servants don’t even look at him when he passes them in the halls, and he doesn’t dare go to the kitchen when he’s hungry anymore. He speaks when spoken to, looks up only when addressed, and when the Grey Warden arrives, looking for volunteers, he throws himself at him, because he didn’t mean to be a heretic, but it seems like the only way to be.


End file.
